"Community
of Confession"
International
Sunday School Lesson for August 11, 2013
Scripture
Text : Nehemiah 9:2, 6-10, 30-36
Purpose:
To seek in worship the strength to resist the influences of the
surrounding secular culture and witness to it
Bible
Lesson
Background
Nehemiah 9
Nehemiah
9:2, 6-10, 30-36 (CEB)
2After
the Israelites separated themselves from all of the foreigners, they
stood to confess their sins and the terrible behavior of their
ancestors.........
6You
alone are the Lord.
You
alone made heaven, even the heaven of heavens, with all their forces.
You
made the earth and all that is on it, and the seas and all that is in
them.
You
preserve them all, and the heavenly forces worship you.
7Lord God,
you are the one who chose Abram.
You
brought him out of Ur of the Chaldeans and gave him the name Abraham.
8You
found him to be faithful before you,
and
you made a covenant with him.
You
promised to give to his descendants the land of the Canaanites, the
Hittites,
the
Amorites, the Perizzites, the Jebusites, and the Girgashites.
And
you have kept your promise because you are righteous.
9You
saw the affliction of our ancestors in Egypt
and
heard their cry at the Reed Sea.
10You
performed signs and wonders against Pharaoh,
all
his servants, and the people of his land.
You
knew that they had acted arrogantly against our ancestors.
You
made a name for yourself, a name that is famous even today.......
30You
were patient with them for many years
and
warned them by your spirit through the prophets.
But
they wouldn’t listen,
so
you handed them over to the neighboring peoples.
31In
your great mercy, however, you didn’t make an end of them.
Neither
did you forsake them, for you are a merciful and compassionate God.
32Now,
our God, great and mighty and awesome God,
you
are the one who faithfully keeps the covenant.
Don’t
treat lightly all of the hardship that has come upon us,
upon
our kings, our officials, our priests, our prophets, our ancestors,
and all your people,
from
the time of the kings of Assyria until today.
33You
have been just in all that has happened to us;
you
have acted faithfully, and we have done wrong.
34Our
kings, our officials, our priests, and our ancestors haven’t kept
your Instruction.
They
haven’t heeded your commandments and the warnings that you gave
them.
35Even
in their own kingdom, surrounded by the great goodness that you gave
to them,
even
in the wide and rich land that you gave them,
they
didn’t serve you or turn from their wicked works.
36So
now today we are slaves,
slaves
in the land that you gave to our ancestors
to
enjoy its fruit and its good gifts.
My
Thoughts by Burgess Walter
Our
text begins with the words “after
the Israelites separated themselves from all of the foreigners.”
You
must go back to the Book of Ezra chapter 10 and read that first to
understand the history of the writers comments. The Book of Ezra
ends by listing all of those that had married alien women, or women
that were not of Jewish decent.
The people convinced Ezra that all of the wives and
children should be separated from all of the men that had married the
non Jewish women. An appropriate sacrifice was instituted to remove
the quilt and sin of the disobedience.
Now, some years later, the Israelites gather once again
and confess both their own sin and the sins of their fathers for the
same thing. If you compare Ezra 10 with Nehemiah 9 you will find the
names of some Levites that had married the pagan women mentioned, and
they are also present for Nehemiah's gathering.
The gathering goes through a great litany of all that
God had done for these descendants of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob. In
the end they make another covenant with God that they will no longer
do this thing. They make a legal document and sign it, like that will
somehow work to keep them from falling back into the sin that had
been forbidden from the time they first entered into Canaan.
It should be pointed out that God on occasion had
blessed these marriages, as in the case of Ruth (a Moabite) and Rahab
(the harlot) and they became part of the Messianic linage recorded
in Matthew 1:5.
The
question always becomes, how can we be in the world but not a part of
it? I think the high priestly prayer of Jesus in the garden gives us
some help. John 17:13-19 13Now
I’m coming to you and I say these things while I’m in the world
so that they can share completely in my joy.14I gave your word to
them and the world hated them, because they don’t belong to this
world, just as I don’t belong to this world. 15I’m not
asking that you take them out of this world but that you keep them
safe from the evil one. 16They don’t belong to this world,
just as I don’t belong to this world.17Make them holy in the truth;
your word is truth. 18As you sent me into the world, so I have
sent them into the world. 19I made myself holy on their behalf
so that they also would be made holy in the truth. Jesus
is telling us our mission is to proclaim to the world the joys of
being a follower of Jesus the Christ, and HE
prays for our safety in doing so. And in John 15 Jesus said these
words, 9 “As the Father
loved me, I too have loved you. Remain in my love. 10If you keep
my commandments, you will remain in my love, just as I kept my
Father’s commandments and remain in his love. 11I have said
these things to you so that my joy will be in you and your joy will
be complete. 12This is my commandment: love each other just as I
have loved you.
Acknowledging our sins is important, but we know in our
own strength, living a holy life is impossible outside of a real
relationship with Jesus. Jesus wants us to be holy so that our joy
will be complete and ask us to share that with the world so that they
too can have the real joy that comes from a relationship with God's
only Son. Today we have the Holy Spirit to guide us and to keep us
safe, we do not need a written contract with God as our text suggest.
The debt was settled long ago, and it was sealed by the Holy Spirit.
We need to go and tell.
No comments:
Post a Comment